The Universal Skill

Anyone who has known me for a while will have heard me going on about how Management is the only profession that everyone in the world automatically assumes that anyone can do. That’s not strictly true, by the way; nearly every literate person also assumes that he or she could write a book (and secretly harbors the belief that their book would be an instant best-seller). But it’s still a rant you will hear me go off on at the drop of a hat, simply because unlike a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a carpenter, a teacher, a baker, a scientist, a peace officer, or even a garbage collector, everyone seems to assume that if a given employee manages to survive two years on the job without doing anything incompetent enough to be fired, that employee is automatically qualified to supervise other personnel.

Obviously, this drives me slightly nuts. As a management professional, I’ve taken three years of Master’s classes, compiled fifteen years of corporate experience (and another six of consulting experience), read, studied and reflected on the profession of leading and managing people, only to be confronted time and again with people who place no value on the profession I practice. Some companies will go so far as to make managerial appointments purely on the basis of price, promoting the individual who will require the smallest salary in their new position, and some others will sink to the level of offering no salary increase whatsoever (expecting their new “managers” to accept the higher workload purely for the joy of their new “power”).

If the only consequence of these displays of idiocy were that management personnel had something to complain about, and Scott Adams got a never-ending supply of material for the Dilbert comic strip and his other works, I’d just put up with it, the way lawyers put up with lawyer jokes and doctors put up with snide remarks about their handwriting. But the truth is, the mirror Mr. Adams holds up to the working world is sometimes chillingly accurate (I’ve actually received memos that unintentionally quoted Dilbert strips!) and these lapses (and the idiots who make them) are often responsible for companies failing, investors going broke, and thousands of worthwhile people losing their jobs.

And the worst part is, it doesn’t have to be this way…

Management is a science; leading people is an art. Neither one is something you can just pick up out of the atmosphere and instantly achieve professional competence in. Yet by the same token, the theories and rules of management science are just as simple and logical and necessary as those of any other science. Once you understand the Hierarchy of Needs, for example, you will never fail to grasp why a company picnic is a useless gesture when the workforce is underpaid or fearful of losing their jobs. Once you grasp the concept of “managing up” you will never fail to consider how you can get what your unit needs from higher management, nor why it is critical for you to do so.

Management remains one of the most lightly regarded of all of the professions, not because people cannot understand it, or even because they do not understand it, but rather because it is the only truly universal job function. No one cares if a lawyer can’t practice medicine, or if an accountant has no idea of how to bake a cake, yet both of these professionals will, in all probability, be required to manage other people at some point in their career. To do this effectively, they need to apply the same care, determination and professionalism to learning the manager’s skills that they would apply to learning any other aspect of their professions. Because the simple truth is, sooner or later, management WILL become part of their professions.

And probably yours, too…